SAP establishes its Innovation Centre and Startup Accelerator Program in IIT Bombay

Software giant SAP SE recently launched a Startup Accelerator Program in partnership with the Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SINE), a technology and business incubation centre at the IIT-Bombay (IITB) campus. SAP further inaugurated an SAP Innovation Centre, housed within IITB campus

The SAP-IITB Startup Accelerator Program shall offer accelerator program to mentor and accelerate the business growth of ten social enterprises or startups over the next year. SINE will manage a business incubator that will enable technology-based entrepreneurship and support young entrepreneurs in their first fledging steps to propel towards the next level.

The SAP Innovation Centre will host research projects in association with the computer science department of IITB; besides, it will provide an opportunity for students to participate in SAP Mile, a university crowdsourcing platform which allows students to take part in virtual internships to learn and experiment on SAP product ideas and solutions. The Centre will also enable students from IITB to work on next generation and cutting-edge technologies.

“IIT Bombay is committed to academic and scientific excellence. We are delighted that SAP is partnering with us through the Innovation Centre and Startup Accelerator program. These programs will also help our students to gain valuable real-life experience in partnership with SAP,” remarked Professor Devang Khakhar, Director of IIT Bombay.

“We want to be a significant accelerator of growth for emerging social entrepreneurs and startups in India,” stated Bernd Leukert, member of the Executive Board, Products & Innovation, SAP SE. “SAP is committed to propelling the entrepreneurship ecosystem in India by providing youth and emerging entrepreneurs with access to technologies they need to succeed in the digital economy.”

SAP works with incubators at leading Indian universities to strengthen the regional entrepreneurship ecosystem through accelerator programs and provides mentorship and capacity building to social enterprises and start-ups. SAP also propels youth entrepreneurship, fosters entrepreneurs in-residence and has constituted the SAP Endowed Chair on ‘Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation’ at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.

Dilipkumar Khandelwal, Managing Director, SAP Labs India and Executive Vice President, Enterprise Cloud Services, SAP SE shared: “The partnership with the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai will further our existing efforts on strengthening the entrepreneurship ecosystem. So far, SAP has impacted over 250 startups; accelerated and mentored 20 startups and social enterprises to make them investible and enable their next stage of growth.”